this is your life

there are apparently a lot of mushrooms that are poisonous to some people and edible for others. unlike food allergies, it’s not an allergic immune reaction, it’s mushroom poisoning but only for some people

Sometimes things are just horrible. Terrible. Scary as shit. Sometimes they make you feel worse. Sometimes things change for the worse and there is nothing good a person can take from it, and that doesn’t mean you’re failing. Sometimes it’s better to just accept things were awful than to force yourself to feel better with toxic positivity.

and I say that as someone who feels that radical acceptance is a really good thing: by accepting that something awful is happening that is largely out of your control can allow you to figure out that tiny margin of things that are in your control instead of spiraling because you wish you could change things you can’t. the post above is a snippet of a longer post I wrote about the pandemic. So I’ll use that as an example: a huge part of the pandemic was out my control, and I could not change the whole world or make the disease go away, but I could still wear a mask or vaccinate and get help when I needed it and try to help others too.

And yes my actions are in a really small scale compared to everything else, but I still did what could, you know? That allowed me to feel that I was doing something, and that is always better than nothing. That’s how you actually fight against a situation that feels hopeless, by accepting that it is scary and doing what you can actually do instead of giving into despair and giving up on life and humanity. You cannot make a shitty situation become this huge positive lesson in your life, but you can find a way to cope with it in a hopeful way that actually helps you and others without trying to brute force positivity out of it.

this won’t completely change the chaotic nature of things but it allows you to find a way to fucking survive them without abandoning yourself and your community. You don’t need to turn tragedy into a beautiful life lesson so you can have hope! Sometimes seeing things as messed up (without falling into a pit of despair) helps you want to try and do what you can to endure them

guys you gotta stop thinking of women in their 30s as elderly it’s just misogyny

you also gotta stop thinking about actual elderly women as lesser human beings. Youth is not a measure of one’s worth.

My old person take today is that I feel like people have normalized being on your phone every single moment including when you're spending "quality" time with others so much that they're defensive if someone isn't ok with it. Yes, you have a problematic relationship with your phone and social media if you physically cannot put it down for a couple of hours to like, have dinner with your friends. It's a show of respect for other people's time and energy as well as important to be present and connect with people around you. Your parents who told you no phone at the table were right for that one.